A Massachusetts librarian has been criticized for rejecting a donation of children’s books by Melania Trump, because she thinks the author, Dr Seuss, is “racist” and a “cliche.”

To coincide with National Read a Book Day, Cambridgeport Elementary School, Massachusetts, was chosen to be the recipient of 10 copies of Dr Seuss books from the first lady.

School librarian, Liz Phipps Soeiro, rejected the donation in an open letter to Trump, however, saying that her school didn’t need the books and that the author was racist.

“You may not be aware of this, but Dr. Seuss is a bit of a cliché, a tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature,”Soeiro wrote. “Another fact that many people are unaware of is that Dr. Seuss’s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes.”

“Open one of his books (If I Ran a Zoo or And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, for example), and you’ll see the racist mockery in his art,” she added.

Soeiro’s comments did not go down well in Seuss’s hometown of Springfield, where Mayor Domenic Sarno branded them“ridiculous.”

“I think her comments ‘stink’,” Sarno said, as cited by Mass Live. “Her comments that this is ‘racist propaganda and that Dr. Seuss is a bit of a cliche and a tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature’ is ‘political correctness’ at its worst.”

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A group of teenagers who filmed and taunted a drowning man in a lake are now facing criminal charges for not reporting his death. Authorities are also pushing for legislation that would allow them to prosecute similar cases in the future.

On Friday, the Cocoa Police Department (CPD), in conjunction with the Florida State Attorney’s Office, announced they are pursuing criminal charges against the five teens under a little known Florida Statute that in short requires a person to report a death.

CPD Chief Mike Cantaloupe said the day after the police found that the teens had not broken any laws, they conducted further research with the state attorney’s office, which “yielded the decision to move forward with charges under this statute.”

“It’s our belief that this law has never been enforced in a scenario like this, but we feel it could be applicable,” Cantaloupe said in a statement.

Under Florida Statute 406.12, any person who “becomes aware of the death of any person” is required to “report such death and circumstances forthwith to the district medical examiner.” Anyone who fails to report a death can be charged with a first-degree misdemeanor.

Cocoa Mayor Henry Parrish also released a statement, imploring the state attorney to “follow through and file the charges presented by the Cocoa Police Department!”

“If this case can be used as an example to draft new legislation, then I am committed to move forward to make that happen,”Parrish added.

On July 9, a group of teens in Bracco Park witnessed Jamel Dunn, 31, drowning in Bracco Pond. Rather than help him or call the authorities, they laughed and mocked him as a cell phone camera captured his slow death.

“He started to struggle and scream for help and they just laughed. They didn’t call the police. They just laughed the whole time. He was just screaming… for someone to help him,” Yvonne Martinez, spokeswoman for the Cocoa Police Department, told the Washington Post.

“Regardless of the circumstances surrounding his decision to enter the water that day, there is absolutely no justification for what the teens did,” Cantaloupe added. “Pursuing criminal charges is a way to hold them accountable for their own actions.”

The terrified four-year-old witness to the killing of Philando Castile by a Minnesota cop pleaded with her mother to cooperate with police moments after his death telling her “I don’t want you to get shooted,” a newly released police video shows.

The video, which came out with a bundle of evidence from the Castile trial, captures the interaction between Diamond Reynolds, Castile’s girlfriend, and her daughter as they were held in the back of a squad car shortly after the shooting.

Philando Castile’s Girlfriend and Her Daughter in Tears After Shooting1:39

In the heart-wrenching video, a handcuffed Reynolds yells “F—!” — and immediately her young daughter begins to cry begging her mother to “please stop cussing and screaming because I don’t want you to get shooted.”

The weeping girl then embraces her mother, who tells her to give her a kiss.

“I can keep you safe,” says the girl, while wiping away tears from her face.

“I can’t believe they just did that,” Reynolds whispers to herself — to which the girl begins to cry uncontrollably.

Reynolds then attempts to get out of her handcuffs, and the girl again desperately yells for her to be calm, out of fear for her mother’s safety.

“No! Please no! I don’t want you to get shooted!” she said.

“They’re not going to shoot me, I’m already in handcuffs,” Reynolds responds in an attempt to pacify the frazzled girl.

Puerto Rico is preparing to vote on becoming the 51st US state, but there are several other options that the islanders can choose from in the non-binding referendum, including maintaining the status quo to becoming a full-fledged country on its own.

Amid a historic bankruptcy declaration, Puerto Ricans will head to the polls on Sunday to reexamine the island’s relationship with the United States.

The options are to maintain Puerto Rico’s status as a commonwealth, become the 51st state in the Union, become a “free association” state, or declare independence and take full control of its governance for the first time in its history.

The conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon began Spain’s settlement on the island in 1508, and it remained a Spanish colony and military outpost until the Spanish-American War in 1898, when it came under US sovereignty.

In 1917, Puerto Ricans were granted United States citizenship. Public Law 600, a 1950 federal law, authorized the island’s residents to draft and adopt their own Constitution, which they did in 1952. At that point, Puerto Rico gained commonwealth status. The question voters face now is: what they want the status of the island to be going forward.

In the US context, the noose is meant to represent lynchings of African Americans that took place primarily from the 1860s to the 1960s [File: Getty Images]

US police have launched an investigation after a noose was found in a public exhibition space of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, the second such incident in less than a week.

David Skorton, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, said in a statement that the rope was found by tourists on Wednesday on the floor of the Segregation Gallery of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).

NMAAHC, which opened last September in a ceremony that included then-President Barack Obama, is the only national museum in the US devoted exclusively to documenting African American life, history and culture.

Museum Founding Director Lonnie Bunch III said in a statement that the noose represents “a deplorable act of cowardice and depravity” and serves as “a painful reminder of the challenges that African Americans continue to face”.